For sometime now I'd been flying a HK 550 wearing a canopy meant for the trex 600 pro as I was after the 'style' of a stretched canopy which is apparent on the trex-550 DFC, and more recently on the newer Align Dominators, particularly of the 450L.

The modification was relatively easy as it involved just 2 steps:

(1) shift the position of the screw-on canopy mounting post on the anti-rotation bracket from the front screw holes to the back screw holes, and,

(2) create new holes for which a new pair of front canopy mounts are to be attached.

Next step to add a longer boom to make it a t-rex 550 DFC without the DFC which has a wider selection of canopies? Hmmm

My observations is that this is one hungry motor and 0 degrees seems to be the most efficient. Running the motor at each of the different timing settings did not cause any hiccuping or any signs I'd expect from a mistimed match with or without load on the main shaft.

Load was simulated by holding folded paper over the main shaft (rotor head removed) and pinching trying to stop it between the thumb and index and middle finger.

I am hoping the Energy (heat) =Isquared x R relationship would give me a little less heat and a longer flight time.

Weather permitting I will test fly it next week to see if I can get slightly more than the 4.5 mins from my 5000mah lipo.

Otherwise this 4956 1250KV SK3 helidrive motor has plenty power and did not bog whatsoever when flown with 6 degrees timing.

I'd bought the the HK-500TT FBL some time in Oct-Nov before any reviews and got it set up in December. For me a 500 size heli made perfect sense for me:

- Smallest of the 'large' helis (stores comfortably in my apartment)
- Relatively inexpensive
- Decent clone parts such as Tarot for this size are plentiful, making them quite cheap to maintain
- I can series the 3s lipos that I use on my 450 helis to double up for use in the 500 so I can keep fewer 6s packs.

Also what appealed to me was that the heli had features that were half way towards the 500 pro model:

- Tail servo mounts on one of the carbon fibre side plates of the main chasis (but this currently means that the only spares I will be able to buy for the CF side plates and the tail push rod would have to be from Align as to date HK has not made these different parts available.

- Tapered tail blade grips

- Stronger looking pro-like tail gearbox

I'd gone on to change a few components for aesthetic reasons while keeping the flying mechanicals the same. The parts changed were:

Recently I'd been messing with the video editing tools on youtube to use on some of the on-board video footage I'd made over the last few months. I thought this would be a good place to put the results... Happy viewing. Hope they're entertaining enough

The last time I set up my 330x-s months ago I could not figure out how to set the gain settings for the flight and hover modes on my Walkera 2801pro-tx (bound to rx-2801pro).

Thinking back it was because (a) I didn't really understand the functions of the tx, (b) it seemed not many people were using this tx on the forum for their 330x-s; those that were were using the heli mode, (c) the thread for this was soooo loooong so I did not go through every page.

Anyway, the way to do it was through the travel adjust settings (TRVADJ) and adjusting the settings for the channel that was being used.

For me I used the gear channel and found out that:
(1) The +ve side of the TRVADJ controlled the flight mode (RED LED), and
(2) The -ve side of the TRVADJ adjusts the gain for the hover mode (GREEN LED)

If the gain is too high (e.g. +100 during flight mode), the stabilization system will overcompensate with an off timing which results in a rocking motion which increases in intensity until it flips.

Images

Just noting here that I used the same servo that's used in the Esky lama v4 fine to replace the busted aileron servo (starboard side), EXCEPT:
- The servo direction was opposite from the stock so reversing the directiom on tje tx was needed.
- The mounting holes on the esky servo needed to be widened by drilling to 2.5-3.0mm so that it would fit the mount just right.

After changing the servo one of the motors failed... Not related. It was about time anyway. Another time...

edit: I actually replaced the front motor that day in 20 mins. Back to flying

- A couple of weekend ago I made the mistake of changing too many settings (namely setting the subtrims to zero and putting a new throttle and pitch curve) on my Walkera 2801pro tx and then trying to fly it so that I lost control of my 450pro clone resulting in broken blades and a bent main shaft. Thankfully everything else survived.

The main killer for me was the combination of the throttle and pitch curves which when spooling up took the heli off the ground with a torque twist which was reversed in direction when cutting the power. Adding changes to the aileron and elevation subtrims just made the situation beyond my capabilities at this point.

Anyway part of the idea was to get hold of a new heli and use the standard settings as a base for all my other CP helis. Excellent excuse for to get a new heli

(2) Because I like a light 450 size heli.

- After building my 450pro heli I realized that it's no light weight. Stable it was, when it flew, but I know it will probably be more efficient hauling less weight around. I prefer efficiency.

I'm not too sure how everyone here got started but I thought I'd just write this down so I remember how my heli corner came to be.

As innocent as it would seem it wasn't my idea that got me into this hobby flying helis - it was my 7-year old daughter's request to buy a 20cm 3-ch coax toy heli last August that I decided to buy 2 so that I could fly it around with her. 15 minutes after bringing it home we started it up and we learnt:

- These helis look really nice flying in the air.
- We were not used to contolling things in the air that actually flew and keeping it in the air more than a 20 seconds was a huge achievement.
- The helis were quite durable and were able to fly-crash-fly-crash.

A year on we find that:

- Between the 2 of us it is really Dad's hobby
- The hobby can expand and become quite expensive
- Larger helis cannot fly-crash-fly-crash the same way small ones can.
- There is so much out there that flies and so much to learn.

RC cars was something I always wanted to get deeper into when I was much much younger but I could not afford it. Today there are affordable and decent helicopters and other flying machines which add an extra dimension to my RC interests.

I didn't know it then, but 1 year ago the "Heli Child" in me was born. And thanks to this forum and the people that make it, there is room to grow.

I suppose this starts my logging activity. Being a working person I hope to find more time to add more stuff where I can.